


PC stands for more than “Player Character”

by milady70



Series: Greyhawk's Mightiest Heroes [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:50:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milady70/pseuds/milady70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D&D prompt from clint/coulson prompt meme; The Avengers are a group of six table-top game enthusiasts that meet once a week to play DnD together at their friend Tony's house. Phil, Tony's 'mundane' room mate, is at first unimpressed with their nerdly ways...that is, until he strikes up an interesting conversation with Tony's friend Clint. </p><p>Extra points for smitten, over-exuberant nerd Clint and revealing all six of The Avengers' chosen character classes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint isn’t your typical D&D nerd. If he had gone to high school, he would have been the popular kid on the baseball team not one of the outcasts who band together to avoid getting dunked in a toilet. But he didn’t go to high school, instead he was a part of Carson’s Travelling Circus and his education was haphazard at best. When he left, Clint realized how little he knew about the wider world and how hard it was to find a job when your one skill was shooting an arrow at a target in a flashy way. He couldn’t even join the army because they wanted you to have at least a GED. By the time he finally passed the test, he had given up on the idea of shooting things for a living. They’d want him to carry a gun, and guns were so heavy and loud, not like the lightweight quiet elegance of a bow. But with the army out he needed a new plan. He finally had his GED but that just allowed him to be hired as a manager at McDonald’s rather than the idiot manning the drive-thru station. So he decided he needed to go to college. Since his application looked more like an April Fools joke than a serious history he had a hard time getting financial aid so Clint is taking a class at a time. He figures by the time he gets the general requirements out of the way he’ll have some idea of what the hell he wants to do with the college degree he’s struggling to get. He feels like his life is on hold until he finishes but what else can he do?

But none of that explains how he ended up in Tony Stark’s apartment rolling 20 siders every weekend and meeting the love of his life. 

He actually started playing D&D at the circus, which surprises people when he tells them. The books are expensive but you really don’t NEED that many, just a PH and a DMG. They only had one set of them for everyone to share and one set of dice. He still remembers how to calculate THAC0 even though the new rules don’t use it. Getting involved with Tony and his friends was an accident. He has a couple of jobs and one of them is at the campus coffee shop. The tips suck because college students don’t have extra cash to give, but he can get all the free coffee he wants and sometimes a muffin or two if they have been sitting around all day and the manager thinks they won’t sell. He resolves that he’ll never eat another bran muffin again after he gets a real job, but that’s still in the future. 

Tony, on the other hand, tips like nobody’s business, though he’s kinda an asshole and the girls who work there for manicure money don’t like to serve him because he leers. Clint doesn’t mind getting leered at if he’s told to keep a $20 when the bill is less than $5. If he’s had a good day he’ll even toss in a little hip shimmy for Tony which just makes him laugh. They’re not friends since he’s pretty sure Tony doesn’t know his name even though he’s been coming in for a month and Clint has a name badge. One day, Tony comes in and orders his typical latte and the largest black coffee they sell. Clint is surprised because the double order means that Tony is EXPECTING someone. Like he said before, Tony’s an asshole so it’s surprising that he has any friend at all. The bell over the door jingles and in walks the biggest guy Clint has ever seen. He looks around and Clint is mentally practicing his “please don’t kill me, here is all the cash” speech when the guy spots Tony and beams at him. 

“Friend Stark!” the guy says and Clint is embarrassed on his behalf because everyone in the shop turns to look. Tony just laughs and waves the guy over to his table with an acknowledgement of “Thor.” Thor? What the hell kind of name is that? Clint learns later that Thor is an exchange student whose English is excellent but who still has a stilted speech pattern marking him as a non-native speaker. Thor also can’t talk quietly to save his life. Clint wonders if he’s an opera singer or something because he seems to project his voice as a matter of course. 

“Friend Stark, I have spoken with Friend Rogers and he has agreed to bring the Lady Natasha to our evening’s festivities!” Clint figures that they are throwing a party and wonders if Tony lives on campus or if he has an apartment somewhere. The casual way he tosses cash around implies the latter but, if so, he’s on campus a lot for someone who doesn’t live there. Thor’s drained his coffee already and Clint heads over to their table to see if he wants another so he hears Tony’s response of “I’d really like a full table of 6. Did he mention if he knew anyone else? We can run it with 5 but I heard the final encounter is a bitch if you don’t have 6.”

There’s nothing that says D&D to Clint, not really, but something about the conversation makes him think about the bearded lady’s voice telling them how many kobolds they have to take out before they win the adventure. He’s not really one to interrupt a conversation so it seems like someone else talking when he says “Deendee?” slurring the letters together like someone who actually plays the game.

Tony looks startled but Thor beams “Yes, Friend Clint! Do you also play the game of swords and magic?”

“I played some as a kid. You want another coffee?” Clint is pretty sure that at least one new edition has come out since last he played, if not two.

“Yes! The brew is most excellent!” He heads back to get the requested coffee so he doesn’t hear what Tony says but he hears Thor’s response of “Friend Clint is wearing a badge naming him thusly, Friend Stark” and he rolls his eyes because he knew Stark didn’t know his name. When he comes back Tony has a gleam in his eye that Clint’s not sure he likes.

“What?”

“You wanna play some three-five?”

“I don’t have any of the books.”

“I could lend you mine.”

Clint doesn’t really have time. This is only one of his jobs and he’s taking a class but he hasn’t done anything for himself in so long and D&D is free once you have the books which he doesn’t even need to buy. Tony can obviously tell he’s not sold so he dangles another carrot. “We’re just making new characters tonight. Fury’s not able to run the mod till Saturday. Come and have some pizza with us. If you hate the new rules you can back out.” Clint’s tempted and free (or at least cheap since he doubts Tony will pay for enough pizza to feed 6 gamers) food is a temptation.

“I don’t get out of work till 8.”

"You’re going to be here for another 10 hours?”

“No, my other job, retail.”

“Oh, well, here’s my address. Come by when you’re done” and Tony hands him an honest to god business card with “Tony Stark, Supergenius” on it. It also has a mailing address a cell number, an email and Tony’s username on twitter, facebook, myspace, and livejournal. The username is the same for all of them, IronMan, and Clint figures it’s some sort of inside joke because there’s no way Tony is a tri-athlete. He figures he’ll go tonight and when they find out how restrictive his schedule is it will fall apart but for a night he’ll have something to do that isn’t work, school or sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Somehow it turns into a regular gaming session instead. Clint is always the one whose schedule they have to work around but no one suggests playing without him. It helps that his elven ranger saved them all in that first mod. Fury writes the most frightening scenarios that always need the full group so whenever one of them has to cancel they skip a week instead. The group is really eclectic and Clint almost feels like a normal person even though he grew up mostly in a circus. Steve is a paladin who’s favorite move is the shield bash, and Clint swears Tony made his wizard chaotic neutral just to drive Steve crazy because he plays the Lawful Stupid thing to the hilt. Tony’s favorite spell is burning hands and he gets a gleam in his eyes when he talks about being able to fly in the future.

Steve’s friend is Natasha Romanov. She’s also an exchange student but her English is much better than Thor’s. Clint wouldn’t have realized she was foreign except the coffee shop became a hangout spot for all of them, albeit at mostly different times and generally Clint was working. Every Tuesday afternoon, she comes in and drinks orange spice tea and talks on her cell phone in Russian for an hour. Natasha is crazy beautiful and none of them understand how she got into the game. They are too busy to go to cons, but he wishes they could so he could watch nerdy gamers fall over themselves to lick her boots. She tells them to call her character “Black Widow” and if she gave a real name to her PC no one knows it. She plays a thief with a frightening level of sneak attack and she’s the Face of their group (nicknamed the Avengers) because Clint’s the only other one of them who took any points in skills like Diplomacy and Gather Information.

He would have guessed that Thor would play a straight fighter or barbarian but he is actually their cleric (apparently he’s pre-med). He decides that a magic hammer is the best weapon ever and won’t be convinced otherwise. He even names the thing, some sort of foreign word that no one else can pronounce. They do have a barbarian, another acquaintance of Tony’s named Bruce. Bruce himself is a science genius but his Half-Orc is dumb enough to attack his friends after he rages. It becomes a running gag to say “we don’t like you when you’re angry” and Bruce is quiet but he’ll smile and say “Hulk Smash!” in a really funny voice sometimes.

They usually end up playing Saturday night and Tony is the only one who complains about missing some party or another. They always play late and Clint has work on Sunday mornings but he’s gotten used to not sleeping with his crazy schedule so 5 hours of sleep feels almost normal. It took a few weeks for Clint to realize there’s another person in the apartment with them. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and ran into a stranger coming out. He figured Tony was just stupidly rich but a roommate explains being able to live off campus in the two bedroom apartment they game in. It’s kinda creepy that he’s never seen the guy before now though, and he seems older than the rest of them. “Hey,” Clint manages to say but it’s awkward as hell and if he didn’t have to piss so bad he would skedaddle back to the group of crazies in the living room. The guy nods and heads back to what is presumably his room at the end of the hall. For the rest of the night, he is conscious of how much noise they are making (especially Thor) and wishes that there was some other place that they could hang out and play but most of them live in the dorms and Clint’s apartment is really just a bed he collapses into each night.

He brings it up to Tony the next time he’s at the coffee shop. “Was that your roommate at the apartment the other night?”  
Tony freezes for a split second and then says “Yeah” in a really flat way. It sounds almost like he’s lying but Clint can’t figure out what the lie is about so he shrugs it off.  
“He doesn’t play?”  
“No. Coulson thinks D&D is stupid.”  
“Well we should at least offer him some pizza or something. I didn’t even realize he was in the apartment.”  
“Phil’s always there,” Tony says and it sounds bitter but, again, it doesn’t really make sense, so Clint ignores it. He resolves to offer Phil some food next Saturday because now that he knows he’s there it’s going seem weird otherwise.

Phil takes a single slice of pizza each week and nothing else. Now that Clint has started seeking him out, he comes out to the living room and watches them for a little bit, but since he doesn’t play he usually doesn’t stay long and Tony gets really snappish whenever he’s in the room. Clint doesn’t understand it but maybe Phil’s an annoying roommate or something when they’re not there. He doesn’t really get why they’re living together since Tony has proved that he DOES have friends (at least a few) but it seems too much like prying to ask, so he doesn’t.

Because Clint works on Saturday, he’s usually the last one to arrive, but he trades with Darcy one week because she begs him for the hours and ends up being the first one there. Tony answers the door but then goes back to his room to finish a report for his Monday morning engineering class. He shrugs it off and starts reading The Invisible Man for his American Studies class. He’s behind on his reading because he has to keep starting and stopping and the book is hard to read that way. He wishes that he could read it for a few hours straight but his schedule doesn’t allow for it. “I had to read that one” he hears and looks up to see Phil standing in the doorway to the living room.  
“Yeah? Whadja think of it?”  
“Hated it the first time I read it in high school. Had to read it again in college and couldn’t remember enough of it to get by so I had to reread it and loved it.”  
“Well I’m screwed then because I’ll be lucky to get through it once for this class.” Phil smiled and they talked about the book until the rest of the Avengers and Fury arrived.

After that, Clint talks more to Phil and he even sees him at the coffee shop (but never when Tony’s there). Somehow, they talk about Clint’s one class and two jobs and the circus but he never finds out what Phil is studying or how he met Tony or why they are roommates since it seems like they don’t like each other. Phil has made some pointed comments about Tony to Clint in the past and Tony bristles like an offended cat whenever he talks to Phil. But things at the circus fell apart because of his curiosity and he has vowed not to lose another thing ever again and D&D on Saturdays and chatting with Phil are two things that remain separate but are both important to him. Then Thanksgiving break happens.

Steve and Bruce go home for break, so Clint figures he won’t see any of them till school starts again. He’s planning on working as much as he can and spending Thanksgiving Day reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. There’s more reading than he’d like for American Studies but they also get to see The Magnificent Seven and Apocalypse Now which he figures is a good trade off. Thor and Natasha, of course, don’t go home and neither does Tony though Clint is pretty sure his father is alive at least. On the Monday before break, Tony stops by the shop and invites Clint to Thanksgiving dinner at his apartment. He doesn’t really have time, but again free food is a good draw so he agrees. It doesn’t occur to him that he was maybe supposed to bring something until he gets there and realizes that Thor has brought some sort of foreign wine and Natasha a pie. He thought at first it was just the four of them but Phil comes out of the kitchen with the turkey already cut on a platter.  
“Phil! You didn’t go home?”  
“No. I’m… working this weekend.”  
“Oh, me too. Did you cook all this?” Now that he thinks about it, Tony doesn’t really strike him as the domestic type so he hopes the answer is yes.  
“Tony mentioned you were staying so I volunteered.” It sounds almost like Phil is talking about just Clint staying in town but English is funny and maybe he meant Natasha and Thor too.

Dinner is pretty good. Definitely better than Clint’s original plan of fast food or maybe a tv dinner. Thor starts telling stories of past adventures and, while Clint likes D&D, that’s too nerdy for him, so he volunteers to clear the table. Phil gets up to help and just ignores him when Clint protests that he had cooked as well. They chat quietly over the washing and drying and Clint is in the middle of scrubbing a pot when Phil nervously clears his throat.  
“So, you’re not gaming on Saturday, right?”  
“Yeah, Bruce and Steve won’t be back till Sunday.”  
“Do you have plans?”  
“Just work like usual. I have a couple of extra shifts because people are gone but the store closes at the same time regardless.”  
“No Black Friday weekend sale?”  
“Not the crazy stuff, thank goodness, although I hear the money is excellent if you open at 4 am.”  
“Did you want to go see a movie?”  
“Sure.” A split second after Clint answered he paused in his scrubbing. He looked over at Phil who had nervous eyes.  
“Yeah,” Phil confirmed but Clint wanted to ask the question regardless.  
“Like a date?”  
“Yes,” Phil repeated.  
He didn’t have time to date. But Phil knew that. He didn’t know anything about Phil, not really, but a date would hopefully change that. But there was something he needed to ask before he answered.  
“What’s the deal between you and Tony?” He was sure that they weren’t dating but he wasn’t going to try to carve out time for a relationship if Phil wasn’t willing to tell him that at least. Phil must have realized how serious the question was, because even though it was obvious he was reluctant to answer he did explain.  
“I’m acting as Tony’s bodyguard. His dad hired me to make sure Tony stays safe at school.”  
Clint felt his jaw drop. “What?”  
“Tony’s dad is really rich. There’s always a threat of kidnapping. There are a couple of people watching Tony all the time and I’m the one who stays with him here at the apartment in case someone gets passed the outside team.” He digs out his wallet and hands Clint a card, Phil Coulson, SHIELD, Security Handling Invasions, Emergencies and Lethal Danger. It seems like a crazy story but Clint grew up in a circus and pretends he is an elf who shoots a bow each week. If there’s one thing gamers seem to have in common it’s that they want to be heroes. And Phil Coulson was a hero, a real life one.  
“Yes.”  
“Yes?”  
“Yes, let’s go see a movie on Saturday.” It would be difficult to find time, probably for both of them, but heroes were worth the sacrifice.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first posted fanfic but I think I was writing fanfic before I knew what it was. Feel free to provide any sort of constructive criticism you'd like including editing suggestions. 
> 
> Thank you to my brother Justin and my friend Malcolm who both read through the first draft of this. Any errors left are my fault.


End file.
